Internet of Things (IoT)

09/16/2016

We recently sat down with Rick Ashmus of Abba Logic to discuss how their recent advancements with the MAC-4Rx MASC Access Controller are revolutionizing the Security and Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) marketplace.

How did Abba Logic get started with PLCs?

Abba Logic started supplying products to security integrators in 1999 by introducing an Echelon based Access Controller into the market. We decided to build quality products that would provide reliable, long-lasting service without requiring a large service commitment. To date, we have hundreds of systems all over the world operating 24 hours a day without any problems. In fact, one police station deployed an early version of this solution in 1999 that’s still in operation. Over the years they have continued to expand their system by adding new buildings, software updates, cameras, and IP connections to their City Hall and the Department of Public Works as needed. Our goal is to provide the marketplace with standard off the shelf controllers that can be used in a variety of software front-ends and applications, across any of the leading Access Control software available.

Where is this technology used today?

Our customers include Correctional Facilities, Police Stations, Courthouses, Airports, County Jails, Military, Schools, Healthcare, and Government to DoD Contractors. Really, anywhere that security is central to operations. We’re also seeing a trend these days where the IT Directors of these facilities are becoming more involved in these upgrades and project implementations.

How do your products help accentuate safety, security, and convenience?

We're the only company in the market that has combined Access Control and PLC control into one unified control panel. So, why do this?It's like having open-ended firmware. Let's say you need something special to happen upon someone coming into work. The first read of the day when the system detects that person entering the building could be to turn on the lights, start the HVAC control system, and disarm all the motion sensors.

It can also be connected to the intercom system so that in an emergency situation, a public announcement can be made while doors are being locked and lights are being turned on. Another example of increased safety is that the solution allowed one customer to create a database link to the jail management system and allow operators to flag inmates as high-security threats, so when a new security guard comes onto their shift, they can see a red box around the cell where an issue occurred during the last shift. This increases reliability and safety because it eliminates human error by not requiring information to be exchanged during a shift change.

We hear that you’re working on IP connectivity solutions. What prompted you to seek alternatives to Power over Ethernet (PoE)?

Unfortunately, most commercially-available locks draw too much power to be supported over PoE cabling infrastructure. Many of the locks are 24v or have a power requirement over 13 watts. So a PoE switch cannot provide power to both a control panel and lock over the same line. Right now, the current offering for PoE solutions for Access Control applications is limited to one lock per wire run at 12vdc power. Because of the power draw, the only kind of lock supported is low-power door strikes.

We believe we can supply a better and more versatile solution by combining IP connectivity with the Echelon communications. We can provide all the functionality the IT directors are asking for and add needed features like peer-to-peer (P2P) communications between controllers, support of 24v locks, and support of multi-drop lines. The industry has been looking for a solution, but the problem is over 90% of all the locks are 24v and the switch doesn’t have enough power to support the lock.

So for example, with one customer, the P2P communications eliminated the need to run cable to the roof where the controls are located so Access readers mounted on a floor by floor basis were tripping relays on the roof. IP also enables WAN capability which provides a tremendous value to a water utility customer that has buildings across the state.

How did Echelon help you change the PLC landscape with your latest Access Controller?

By using Echelon’s 6050 processors and IzoT hardware to create a subnet off the customer’s network we dropped the number of processors needed from 4 down to 2. This increased the speed of operations and we saw a 50% reduction in the overall cost of the product.

This was huge. The controller is smaller, faster, and easier to manufacture. This means that we can give the customer all the advantages of PoE Access Control while still using a single Cat-6e cable and combining that with a separate pair for power. Running the cable this way allows you to extend the line and put multiple controllers on that line. For instance, the MAC-4Rx MASC Access Controller was originally started with a goal of creating a 2-door controller, but we ended up with a 4-door controller.

IT Directors can now have IP connectivity between buildings and areas of control, accessing their central computer from virtually anywhere and distributing user roles and access. As the systems grow larger, Efficiency is also a huge benefit. There might be as many as 10,000 points to monitor. The Echelon solution broadcasts out all changes immediately and tells you if there is a change at one point so you don’t have to continuously monitor each one.

That all sounds amazing. What room is there for further advancements using this technology?

With the new processor, we plan on creating a single door controller that can be located at the door to eliminate all the home run wiring. Today, most IT directors are now looking for as many systems as possible to be supported on Ethernet. By combining Echelon’s flexible 6050 processors, we can harness IP connectivity in a single product to deliver a superior experience.

06/10/2016

The old proverbial saying “what goes around comes around” has special meaning to me. Not wishing to date myself, my Thesis about “Free Space Laser Communications” was close to 27 years ago. With the emergence of visible light as a vehicle for communications (VLC) I now, somehow, feel vindicated.

Why visible light communications?

The exponential growth of data has placed significant demand for a flexible, reliable, secure, high-bandwidth, low-cost network medium. While wireless provides flexibility, radio does not have unlimited bandwidth. Also, the cost, security and reliability requirements of radio remain a challenge.

Visible light communications may provide us with an answer to this conundrum with 4 unique characteristics.

1. Visible light has much higher available bandwidth than radio frequency (RF) systems (Wi-Fi, cellular,…). The spectrum graphic below from an article by Harald Haas, shows the visible light spectrum to be 10,000 times larger than the entire radio frequency spectrum.

2. Visible light exhibits higher security than radio frequency (RF) systems. Unlike RF systems which broadcast their communication to anyone listening (even through walls), visible light communications can be easily confined. Also visible light communication is currently considered point to point and interference with the light beam can alert for the detection of eavesdropping.

3. Like all wireless, visible light is flexible. Unlike the current use of light as a form of communications propagating within fiber optic networks (and now through the promise of silicon photonics), Visible light based communications are wireless.

4. Has lower deployment costs. By leveraging the use of existing lighting infrastructure (in your house, on the streets, in your car,…) visible light communications reduces the need for new infrastructure deployment. Lights exist in massive numbers and are considered pervasive, making the visible light network pervasive.

There are 2 other significant benefits of visible light communications that should be mentioned:

1. Safety. Devices using radio gear can be dangerous in places like :

Oil platforms (where it can cause sparks) and underwater (where the salt conducts electricity),On planes (where it may interfere with other equipment on the plane),In hospitals which use apparatuses that are sensitive to radio interference.Visible light communications have a significant advantage over cellular and Wi-Fi in that visible light transmission does not cause electromagnetic interference.

2. VLC as an indoor GPS. Philips developed a “connected lighting system” that it demonstrated in 2013 at EuroShop and LIGHTFAIR. Phillips placed LED luminaires in a dense network that provided illumination while also functioning as a positioning grid. Each luminaire was identifiable and able to communicate its position to an application on a shopper’s smart device. The light fixtures themselves communicate this information by virtue of their presence everywhere in the store as discussed in this article.

What is Visible light communications?

The VLC acronym commonly refers to an illumination source (like a light bulb), which in addition to providing illumination can also become a vehicle for transmitting data using the same light source.

VLC = Illumination + Communication

Imagine a flashlight sending a Morse code signal. While such flickering of light would not be a good “illumination”, one could send signals by flashing the light so quickly, that the eye cannot see the flashes (representing data that is obscured from humans because of the human eye “flicker fusion threshold”). The result is that VLC technology can be applied in “any” environment that is currently lit.

Most people do not realize that Visible Light Communications (VLC) pre-dates the transmission of speech through radio. The first of what you could reasonably call a VLC apparatus dates back to 1880 when Alexander Graham Bell invented the “photophone” on June 3rd, 1880; which transmitted speech on modulated sunlight over several hundred meters and received a US patent. Unfortunately, the unpredictability of weather phenomena and the necessity for bright daylight greatly diminished the practicality of this technique. From that point on, VLC has been extremely slow to develop until recently.

Why Now? (Is an obvious question, asked by most people).

The exponential growth of LED light bulbs driven by energy savings and a longer life expectancy is enabling a transformation in the general lighting industry. While such monitory benefits are obvious to most people, the technological opportunities presented by LEDs are not quite as apparent.

One factor for the rise of visible light communications is a result of another important property of LED bulbs. Unlike incandescent bulbs, LED’s use semiconductors to create light. It's this electroluminescence source of light that can easily be modulated for seamless integration into digitally communicating networks.

This Trojan horse approach of extending the utility of a simple light bulb is a timely intervention as we propel headlong into the Internet of Things. Now signals can be piggybacked on lights that are already in use — street lamps, car headlights, room lighting, signs, televisions, etc. to transmit data to gadgets such as mobile phones, tablets, and wearable devices. Such capability is already showing up in products as was recently demonstrated by multiple vendors at the Light and Building fair in Frankfurt, March 2016.

This is just the beginning! VLC along with LED technology is rapidly evolving, allowing faster speeds, increasing functional capabilities, more cost effective architectures and ever expanding reach.

Now, with the advent of smart cities, smart homes/buildings and even smart cars (communicating with other cars through headlights, running lights, turn signals…), VLC is extending the reach of the internet of things.

Conclusion:

Visible light communications will become a significant driver for the final stage of the Internet of Things; one that completely ushers in an age of constant connectivity for people, places ...and now things!

It has the potential to completely disrupt the communications industry through lighting deployments, as well as utilizing any illuminated surface, to provide ubiquitous high-speed access to Internet and telecommunications services. As the enormous VLC opportunity unfolds, multiple organizations are rushing to create standards (IEEE, ANSI, JEITA, Li-Fi consortium,….). In fact, evolution is already underway in one market segment as mobile networks are now considering VLC in their 5G standards

It is also no surprise that VLC and IoT are maturing within the same time frame. They are highly synergistic and enable each other. More importantly, as “things” become ever more mobile we can expect VLC to not only extend the reach of IoT but greatly enhance the overall capacity of future networks.

One expectation is that deployed networking solutions will evolve their current networking environments to embrace expanding usage of VLC (in fact mobile networks are now considering VLC in their 5G solutions).

This unprecedented convergence of power, lighting and networking will also force a convergence of IT and facilities departments.

This convergence is something that has already begun with Lighting/Building Automation control systems and ends up impacting business property owners (CBRE, Cushman & Wakefield, Kimco realty,...), municipalities, and ultimately even the homeowner.

While the technology is disruptive, a second possible consequence of this disruption is the potential impact to the well-established verticals and the key players in those verticals.

On one hand, embedded network technology manufacturers are expected to grow their existing networking footprint to include the massive footprint of deployed lights.

Do the CISCO's, Juniper's, Ericsson's, Huawei's... become lighting companies as well?

On the other hand, VLC is also an important extension to the lighting industry to leverage their ubiquitous physical presence and drive the conversion of a 100+-year-old lighting technology into future market opportunities.

Do the Phillips, OSRAM'S, Zumtobel's, GE's, Acuity's, CREE's,... become networking companies as well?

This opportunity to approach IoT through networking or lighting is unprecedented in that two massive and entirely diverse industries are now innovating and furiously competing to capture the IoT opportunity. This competition is expected to produce life to change technology breakthroughs as this marketplace battle will continue for many years to come!

04/06/2016

Ron Sege, our Chairman and CEO, was interviewed recently by Randy Reid, editor and founder of the Edison Report. Randy and Ron sat down at the Light + Building conference in Frankfurt, Germany and talked about Echelon, our recent streetlight deployment in Cambridge and the future of lighting controls. Below find a sneak peek of the Q&A. If you want to read the entire questions & answers, click here.

Randy: We saw a press release about a large job in Cambridge.

Ron: Cambridge, MA deployed about 5,500 lights, which was a combination of cobraheads for street lighting as well as many decorative luminaires. We created one system with multiple controllable zones. In addition to turning on and off, we dim the luminaires for additional savings. The city retrofitted their existing luminaires with LED and deployed Echelon using a combination of wireless and power line carrier communications. We used wireless on the cobraheads and PLC on the decorative, as our system supports both. This way no one has to drill holes in the decorative fixtures and add antennas.

Randy: If a customer typically saves 50% with LED, how much additional can they save with controls?

Ron: Typically Echelon will save about an additional 35%. In Cambridge, when the lights turn on at sunset, they start out at about 50% and then the intensity changes at various times during the night based on whether it is a residential area or industrial area. Also, as the LED output degrades over time, which they do, the city turns the lights up to maintain a constant light level.

Randy: What are your LIGHTFAIR plans in San Diego?

Ron: We are very excited about LIGHTFAIR and we will be exhibiting our Cambridge applications where cobraheads and decorative will be together. We want to show that Echelon allows customers to really connect anything to anything.

01/30/2016

City streetlight conversion to LED lights is sweeping the globe. Cities around the world are changing and adding LED streetlights to reduce cost, improve energy efficiency as well as traffic and pedestrian safety. Bellingham, Wash is a great example of how cities and their lights are become smart cities. Read the Bellingham and Intelligent Streetlights story.

08/31/2015

Whether it is a new parking structure or a retrofit, parking garages now have to comply with new energy codes from California (Title 24-2013) and ASHRAE (90.1-2010). From an energy consumption perspective, parking garages alone account for about 15 percent of a building’s total lighting energy use, according to the National Renewable Energy Labs (2012).

One feature that sets garage structures apart is the exterior walls. Typically, two walls are exposed to natural light, creating the lighting challenge: what is well lit today could be dangerously dark tomorrow.

Installing LED lighting does significantly alter energy consumption, but for the last mile of cost reduction, the only way to reduce more is by controlling the lights through a smart networked lighting platform. This holistic view of a lighting installation provides the right tools to adjust and monitor lighting one light at a time to lighting groups to the entire installation.

Check out our new software solution, Lumewave by Echelon CMS, that is designed with the installer and administrator in mind and helps them to create an energy efficient and modern environment for occupants of parking garages.

07/20/2015

At last count, we shop at 47,000 shopping malls (or centers) in the global market. Barring subtle differences in mall descriptions and classifications, the basic categories are dividing into eight descriptors ranging from the Mega Mall — such as the Cevahir Istanbul in Turkey, Europe’s largest — to an open air, strip mall — such as 280 Metro Center in Colma, Calif. — that offers patrons attractive anchor stores including Nordstrom Rack, Marshall's, Pier 1 Imports and Home Depot.

One key element of a shopping center’s basic infrastructure is good outdoor lighting. With millions of aging light fixtures ready for upgrade, many shopping centers are taking advantage of this opportunity to upgrade to sophisticated lighting networks that incorporates LED lighting resulting in better light control/monitoring, cost and energy savings, and improved safety.

Kimco owns approximately 745 leasable shopping establishments across 39 states plus Puerto Rico, Canada, Mexico and Chile. Kimco is noted as North America’s largest publicly traded owner and operator of neighborhood and community shopping centers.

The 280 Metro Center shopping center upgraded its parking area to Lumewave by Echelon wireless lighting control system that provides two-way communication via a central gateway device and cellular modem. Lumewave is engineered to provide a highly efficient and flexible solution for monitoring parking lot lighting. The installation is comprised of 79 high-performance 217 Watt LED area fixtures equipped with passive infrared (PIR) motion sensors along with 0-10V dimmable drivers with a Lumewave wireless lighting control node fitted to each fixture. The benefits the center received from the wireless control solution include:

- Additional savings of approximately 30 percent, compared to dusk-to-dawn operation through late-night scheduled dimming and motion-activated control

- Fixture-level control system enhances safety and security at the center due to the motion sensing that can actively deter unwanted activity

- Fault detection notifications from the system can help reduce maintenance inspection costs and can aid the resolution of any lighting outages more quickly.

The winner is: For parking area lighting upgrade, Kimco won the “Best Use of Lighting Controls at a Single Facility”, “Greatest Absolute Number of Facility Upgrades” and “Largest Absolute Area of Facility Upgrades.”

07/12/2015

Our discussion with Noah Goldstein, a research director at Navigant Research, continues as we talk about the role of lighting in both smart building and smart city applications. In part 1, we covered some drivers for LED lighting, the emergence of lighting as a service, and the prospects for IoT convergence.

Echelon: In your role at Navigant Research, you lead the Smart Buildings program. What’s new about the role of lighting in smart buildings?

Noah Goldstein: I now view lighting as the beach head of the next generation of buildings. People who operate buildings have been doing largely the same thing for 100 years, which is providing standard services. Now, lighting is becoming a platform for other applications, such as security. It’s creating an opportunity to provide services to the people in buildings that we couldn’t even dream of 30 years ago. These new services are going to make building space more valuable, and ideally make the space more effective and help people be more productive.

ELON: Are you talking about the Internet of Things here?

GOLDSTEIN: It’s a parallel thrust to the IoT, but different. Most of the IoT has been focused on the actual components of buildings, including lighting being integrated through the Internet. This is different. It’s kind of turning IoT on its head, to say that what you’re really doing is using this ubiquity of access provided by lighting systems to deliver anything to anybody, depending on what you want.

We’re shifting from an area and a time when lighting was ubiquitous and always on, to lighting services that are ubiquitous but tailored to specific needs. So for instance, if you have a warehouse with automated robots filling orders, you don’t need to have the lights on all the time. But you do need to tailor it so that if someone is walking the floor, the lighting will come on as appropriate.

Having said that, though, lighting is definitely going to be the first system to embrace the IoT and serve the overall ‘appification’ of building automation control.

ELON: There’s been a lot of talk lately in the building automation world about building optimization. What are your thoughts on building optimization?

GOLDSTEIN: In my mind, true building optimization is where buildings can be operated to their best performance. But that goal is challenging now, because most building automation systems are siloed by function, even if they have interactive aspects. For example, if you leave the lights on all day, you will increase the heat in a building. If you seal a room off for security reasons, you’ll also reduce the amount of light and HVAC and air that goes that room.

I think we’re going to see a step-by-step push toward what I call operational efficiency, rather than optimization. I think there’s agreement that operational efficiency is relevant and important, but everyone has different definitions for what it actually means and how it’s applied. From a network security person’s perspective, a secure network runs well when there are no infractions. From a building facility management standpoint, a building runs well when there are no calls from tenants complaining that it’s too hot or too cold. From a building owner’s perspective, a building runs well when every space is filled and they’re making money.

But those are all different goals. What’s needed is a convergence of the definition of what operational efficiency really means that goes beyond simply the facilities manager. It needs to include the whole value and information chain. This is especially true if you have a CIO overseeing the IT backbone and a portfolio manager managing the space and the CFO managing the energy bill. They all have different goals.

ELON: Earlier in our conversation, you talked about the generational shift in facilities management, with current facilities managers reaching retirement age and their replacements being from the smartphone and app generation. Does that also play into this whole issue of operational efficiency?

GOLDSTEIN: Absolutely, yes. The fundamental job of building facilities operations is changing. The new facilities managers need to become experts in networking and security and devices and different communications protocols. They’re going to have to respond more to the kinds of services that tenants want, as opposed to just providing the same things they’ve always provided.

That’s one reason I think the idea of real estate companies taking on IT management in buildings is really interesting. Instead of having the building facilities manager in the basement, you might have the building IT guy in the basement managing the IT for all the different clients in a building. Then, the real estate companies can sell services such as cell phone boosters and Wi-Fi as part of the lease, instead of each tenant managing their own Wi-Fi and such.

This ties in with the rise of the service model. If you’re a tenant in a commercial office building, you just want your office to run as well as it can for your people. And the real estate companies are recognizing all these services as potential revenue streams.

ELON: So far we’ve been talking about smart buildings and mainly indoor lighting issues. Are similar things going on with outdoor lighting?

GOLDSTEIN: When it comes to outdoor light, there are two threads. There the ancillary outdoor lighting that supplies light around buildings, which is owned by facilities. That outdoor lighting will be brought under the auspices of what’s happening inside the buildings. So if there’s a garage or parking lot adjacent to the building, the lighting there will be transitioned along with the building’s indoor lighting.

Then there’s the outdoor lighting infrastructure that’s owned by cities. Just as indoor lighting is the beach head for smart buildings, intelligent outdoor lighting is also the beach head for a smart city. It’s easy to envision a street lamp as a sensor as well as a provider of light. A number of cities are already recognizing that taking an integrated tuned lighting approach is a great way to save money.

Convergence as we’re discussing it really means just viewing outdoor lights as sensors that can provide better services. For city lighting and street lights, there are security applications, for instance, that are relevant and that can be combined with lighting. Multiple systems can be converged on a lighting backbone. A city can easily make itself wireless if it thinks of its lamp posts as access points.

What’s a bit different in cities, though, is that the acceptance level will vary depending on the country and region and the culture of each city. For example, some cities in Asia are fully committed to having Wi-Fi everywhere. In these places, using an outdoor lighting fixture as a resource to provide multiple services, including lighting, is a natural fit. Other cities have greater concerns about privacy and what that means for people.

ELON: What are some of the other services that smart cities could deliver using their street lighting systems?

GOLDSTEIN: A city can create a smart parking system based on its street lamps, embedding sensors to sense whether a car is present or absent in any particular parking space. Cities can also explore things like noise monitoring through lamp posts, although that does raise some security questions. But the lamp posts can also be used for environmental monitoring and studies, such as temperature and humidity, to provide better awareness of the local conditions.

Street lamps can be used to sense whether there’s snow on the ground. In some areas, that’s really critical for providing appropriate services. These are all services that can be embedded in a street lamp.

ELON: Where do you see all of this heading in the future?

GOLDSTEIN: What we’re seeing a bit now, but what I would love to see more of, is not thinking about lighting as just providing light, but providing a way for spaces to be used in the ways that people want to use them.

It’s a bit simpler to think about outdoor lighting. Generally, people just want regular flat light tuned to the right light level.

For indoor spaces, I’m really excited about people thinking about lighting as a palette. As a way to bring new kinds of tones and flavors into a room that make what people need to do in that space more effective.

A lot of the integration happening now, such as between lighting and HVAC controls, is through cloud-based services. But there are a lot of building managers and owners who do not want cloud-based control at this point; they want everything to be controlled locally. I don’t know how long that’s going to persist.

But as I’ve said before, integrated controls are happening now, and adoption will increase over the next 10 years. Buildings will need to report how much energy they use. Tenants will demand higher-quality services. The technology will have to get easier to use and easier to interact with. User interfaces really need to be made simple and clear. Everything needs to be plug and play, to make lives easier for the people operating the systems as much as for the people who are the end users of the systems.

IIoT Talks is a conversation between industry luminaries and Echelon Corporation about the opportunities of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) market. Echelon shares highlights of these conversations via the company blog. If you are interested in participating, please send an email to klippe@echelon.com.

05/15/2015

Last week Echelon attended the annual LIGHTFAIR International Show at New York City’s Javits Center. LIGHTFAIR 2015 is one of the largest shows in the world for lighting technology, design, fixtures and services. As many as 26,000 visitors and 575 exhibitors participated in this year’s show, which organizers say set a record for attendance.

I have three takeaways from LFI:

1) There’s significantly increased interest in connected lighting controls, or the ‘Lighting Industrial Internet of Things’ (L-IIoT). I heard a lot more talk about the importance of controls, and more control technologies were on display. At the Echelon booth, we fielded a lot more questions than in previous years about specific applications and project deployments.To me, this suggests that controls are moving from ‘thinking about’ to ‘doing’ in key applications. As technologies such as multi-color LEDs for white-tuning and sensor integration become mainstream, this can drive the adoption of connected controls—because the business and societal benefits of these additional capabilities simply cannot be realized without connectivity.

2) The LED transition is continuing to gain momentum. In 2014, according to Strategies Unlimited, LED light engines made up almost 50% of the revenue generated by all light source types. Even with this, only 5% of the installed base of 30 billion+ light sources is now LEDs. So, we are only at the beginning of the LED transition. Not only will this mean more efficient lighting, but more range of functionality, as well.

3) LEDs are quickly becoming more feature-rich, which means they can provide more utility to more users as time goes on. A great example of this is white-tuning, which was on display conspicuously in the show for the first time this year. There’s a growing body of research that says that tunable LEDs can improve students’ ability to learn, accelerate recovery in health situations, and even improve customer satisfaction and generate increased sales in retail environments.

These are examples of how LED technologies can move beyond simple energy savings to providing strategic business benefits. For more information on white-tuning, or so-called human-centric lighting, a good overview can be found here, and very interesting work is being done here.

In line with these themes, at the show Echelon demonstrated our new Lumewave by Echelon lighting control platform, with the theme, “If you have it, we can control it.” What does that mean? We offer unified outdoor and indoor controls. We can connect virtually any fixture and sensor to support a wide variety of applications. And we have both secure wired communications links and fast-to-deploy wireless ones. And we have an integrated solution from “device to cloud” for easy installation, startup, commissioning, monitoring and management.

We also featured our newly enhanced Customer Management System for easy startup, commissioning, monitoring and managing of the system. We also had fun with a proof-of-concept demo of how our system controls white-tuning applications. In this demonstration, we remotely adjusted the color temperature of a fixture from cool white (toward the blue end of the spectrum) to warm white (toward the reds), along with on, off and dimming.

Echelon also participated in two panels, educating attendees on next-generation lighting controls, which had an estimated combined audience of more than 300 people. The first panel was titled “Transformation of the Lighting Industry to an Integrated Electronic Platform” and I spoke on that along with Menko Deroos, CEO and co-founder, Xicato. The second panel, “Lighting, Building Automation and IIoT Convergence: Perils and Promise,” featured Echelon’s CTO Sohrab Mohdi, along with John Curcio, chief commercial officer, Cupertino Electric; Jerry Mix, CEO, Finelite Inc.; and Noah Goldstein, research director, Navigant Research. Both panels generated lots of questions about the value of lighting controls, how they work, how secure they are, etc.

As the LFI show made abundantly clear, the transition to LED lighting, and the advancement of LED and lighting IIoT technologies, is driving lighting from being mostly about utility and efficiency to being a key element of business outcomes and strategies. Look for Echelon to continue our focus on adapting our innovations to the lighting world.

04/27/2015

At this year’s LIGHTFAIR International (LFI), the world’s largest annual architectural and commercial lighting trade show and conference, Echelon will be shining a light on its wireless and wired connectivity solutions for lighting control under the Lumewave by Echelon brand. LFI will take place in Javits Center, New York City, May 5-7.

This year, Echelon will be seen and heard in multiple booths and on speaker panels, suggesting various ways that networked lighting can serve as the basis for Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) applications.

Demonstrations will take place in the Echelon booth #3373, as well as in the Avnet booth #666 and the Cree booth #1657.

The ‘Lumewave by Echelon’ wireless outdoor lighting control products, aimed primarily at the North American market, will be showcased in the Echelon booth. Products displayed include the MWX-LVE-180U and MWX-LVE-90U Bluetooth-enabled very long-range microwave radar-based sensor and controller, specifically designed for controlling street, pathway and area lights. Attendees will see an outdoor lighting demo using lights from Leotek controlled by the TOP900-TLX controller. (Echelon booth #3373)

LED lighting will be featured in the Echelon outdoor lighting control demo in the Avnet lighting booth (#666) and the Cree booth (#1657). The demo will show how a Lumewave by Echelon TOP900-TLX wireless lighting controller and LumeStar software can be used for commissioning and managing the system. Attendees will see dimming and energy management as well as how easily the system is deployed.

An indoor lighting proof-of-concept demo will be displayed in the Echelon booth. This demo shows how building owners can leverage the same Power Line wiring that already exists in a building to control color tuning in LED indoor lighting. Echelon’s networking control technology and SmartServer smart energy manager are featured, controlled using a low-cost tablet computer. (Echelon booth #3373)

Echelon CEO Ron Sege will speak on a panel titled “Transformation of the Lighting Industry to an Integrated Electronic Platform” (Session #L15SM04) on Wednesday, May 6, from 8:30 a.m. – 9:30 a.m. along with panelist Menko Deroos, CEO and co-founder, Xicato.

04/08/2015

Like our microwave sensor? Vote for us in two product-of-the-year competitions! The Lumewave by Echelon microwave sensor was recognized in two industry product-of-the-year awards competitions this spring. The microwave sensor is the market’s first Bluetooth-enabled, very long range radar-based microwave sensor and controller for controlling street, pathway and area lights.

Electrical Construction & Maintenance (EC&M) magazine, the technical authority for electrical professionals, named our MWX-LVE-180U Microwave Sensor a winner in the "Lighting Controls" category for 2015 Product of the Year.

And Consulting-Specifying Engineer magazine, whose readers are responsible for buying or specifying technical products, selected the sensor as a finalist in the "Lighting Controls" category for its 2015 Product of the Year program.

The MWX-LVE-180U is the market’s first Bluetooth-enabled, very long range radar-based microwave sensor and controller for controlling street, pathway and area lights.

Echelon and other EC&M category winners will go on to compete for the 2015 Product of the Year Platinum, Gold, and Silver awards, which will be determined through an upcoming online readers’ poll and announced in the August 2015 issue. (We'll post the link to the voting page when it becomes available.)

In the Consulting-Specifying Engineer competition, Echelon and other finalists appear in the April 2015 issue. Qualified readers are invited to vote for Product of the Year winners, to be announced in the September issue. Click here for the voting page.

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also grant to Echelon a worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free and
fully-paid, transferable (including rights to sublicense) right to exercise all
copyright, publicity, and moral rights with respect to any original content
you provide to the Website. The comments are moderated. Comments will
appear as soon as they are approved by the moderator.